Author: Mary Ila Ward

Career Sportlight: STEM Careers

Do you like science or math? Does engineering or technology interest you? If so, this career spotlight is a must read. STEM Careers are “in-demand” and offer several options for cool jobs, and according to Stemcareer.com, during the next decade, the U.S. demand for scientists and engineers is expected to increase four times the rate for all other occupations.

STEM is an acronym referring to the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The term is typically used when addressing education policy and curriculum choices in schools to improve competitiveness in technology development. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy.

Wikipedia

Change the Equation is one organization that has developed a variety of resources around STEM learning, from data and research to philanthropic best practices. Read more about STEMworks and other resources.

What do you need to pursue a career in a STEM field?

Education:

Varying levels of education are required for STEM careers. ONET provides a comprehensive list of all STEM Careers. Search ONET for specific information on each occupation.

If you are a high school student and are interested in a STEM career, consider taking various math and science courses, pre-engineering or computer science in high school.

Is the field growing?

What is the pay like? (A selection of STEM careers salaries are included below.)

Chemical Engineer

Software Developer

Statisticians

What’s the Holland Code* for STEM Careers? (The same STEM Career selection as above is represented below.)

Interest code for Chemical Engineers: IR

Investigative — Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

Realistic — Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

Interest Code for Software Developer: ICR

Conventional — Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

Interest code for Statisticians: CI

Source: www.onetonline.org

If you are interested in learning more about STEM Careers, check out these articles and resources:

6 Things You Need to Know About STEM

The Top Paying STEM Jobs for Recent Grads

STEM Career

Change the Equation

Are you interested in a STEM Career? Why or why not?

*Holland Codes are a way to classify a person based on their skills and interests as well as jobs based on the nature of the work. If you have an interest in knowing what your Holland Code is in order to match yourself to careers to pursue, you can read more about our assessment process.

April 7, 2015

6 Steps to Choose a College
According to collegeboard.org, you have almost 4000 colleges and universities to choose from the in United States. Sorting through which options would be right for you can be a challenge given the seemingly unlimited possibilities.

If you’re a student or a parent trying to help a student pick a college, use the

Career à Major à College

approach. Using these steps:
1. Determine who you are through your talents, passions and values.
2. Use this information about who you are to determine what career fields would be a match for you.
3. Vet these matches by their marketability and in-demand outlook.
4. Determine college major(s) that match with these fields.
5. Determine which colleges have your major(s), and then which colleges are a good fit for your personality, budget, type of school, distance from home and extra programs they offer. You can download a guide to walk you through this using collegeboard.org’s great tool.
6. Utilizing the download, use the chart to map out your options. Once you get everything down in black and white on paper, you’ll be surprised how clear the decision may just become!
Interested in having a tool to help you map out your path to college and career? Order our Beyond Ready^TMinteractive workbook for $19.99.
April 2, 2015
Be Aware, Be Very Aware: Why “Healthy Paranoia” is Killing HR
As a part of a subcontract I work on, I just sat through a 30 minute plus online compliance training video. If you want to leave yourself paralyzed to make business decisions, I’ll send you the clip. It will leave you questioning the world in general.

I know we live in a world of terrorists, computer hackers and people who want to do harm, but the video left me thinking that their approach to business was to scare the living daylight out of every employee thinking that this would help prevent mishaps, lawsuits and wrong actions.

Although I can appreciate what I’m sure are good intentions behind why the company sees this as a need (I bet they have born the brunt of a lawsuit or two) I question whether or not it is going to make them any safer as an organization from the ills it is trying to combat. And, is having every employee, contractor, vendor, supplier and subcontractor (basically everyone the company does business with) spend over half an hour doing this the best use of thousands of people’s time? Will it make the company more profitable? Will it make anyone better? And will watching it keep the people who want to do harm from doing it? Doubtful.

When we paint a picture that everyone should “be very, very aware” and have a sense of “paranoia” (these are specific terms from the video about conducting day-to-day business like sending emails) we leave people paralyzed to make decisions, which does not make individuals or organizations better. It leave them scared, or wanting to scream.

Instead, why don’t we ask employees to ask themselves two questions before making decisions or acting:

Is doing this/not doing this going to advance my company and myself in an ethical manner?

If I do this/don’t do this, what is the worst that could happen?

Or better yet, spend half an hour teaching them about values of your organization and treat them like adults who are capable of living out those values through their actions. Explain the big picture why instead of giving a detailed list of don’ts.

What other questions do you think we need to ask ourselves that keeps us from needing compliance videos that scare and detract?
March 31, 2015
Give Back Feature- Ben Eubanks

Making HR Better- One Pro at a Time is Ben Eubank’s mission. Ben, who started his career in Human Resources in 2008, has a passion for his field that gets him up at 5 AM on the weekends to blog and develop other content to help HR professionals become better at what they do. He does this in addition to holding down a full-time HR role himself and raising three young children with his wife (and he runs quite a bit too!).

The results of Ben’s efforts have led to national speaking opportunities, recognition for his efforts in global publications and an audience of over 15,000 monthly readers. “I firmly believe that without this deep passion to help my audience succeed,” Ben says, “I would have given up long ago!”

As an HR professional, Ben is a believer in assessing candidate’s passion for the field. “Passion is one of the most telling things in an interview,” he says. “If it is lacking, I discard the candidate immediately. I can teach you HR law, how to recruit, or what to do if an employee is misbehaving. I can’t teach you how to be excited about your job. People who are passionate are typically doing things outside work to keep them plugged into the community, from volunteering to side jobs and other activities.”

Ben exemplifies this. He is engaged in the HR professional community and is a connector with people in person and through his blog. I’ve never once asked Ben to do something or to explore an idea with me when he hasn’t been more than willing and excited to do so. His passion for the field is contagious and therefore his advice and guidance is desirable and readily used.

Ben sees how passion drives productivity (and profits) in business. “Aligning personal passions with organizational mission is a critical need in the business world today, and it’s a key differentiator for those that due it well.”

As an leader in HR strategic thinking, Ben does this by using corporate culture built on shared values to help drive behaviors in people. “I create behavioral targets I expect to see with regard to culture/values. For example, instead of saying ‘We have integrity,’ I’ll tell them (a candidate) an example of a time when someone exhibited integrity, even when it was painful. That helps to make values real to our employees and not just a sheet of paper with words on it.”

Why does been give back tirelessly? Because he is so appreciative of those who have given back to him. “When I was studying to pass the HR certification exam back in 2008, I was completely in over my head. I reached out to a few random strangers for advice. The help they offered was invaluable, and I passed the exam a few short months later. I promised myself that no matter how busy I got or what I ended up doing, I would always and forever help those that were preparing for the exams. That led me to create several courses for the PHR and SPHR that have both been very helpful and popular in the HR community.

Whether you are an HR professional or not, we all should be in the business of helping develop people and the organizations in which we work. Ben’s blog and his resources can help us all do just that. Check him out at:

-Website link http://upstarthr.com

-Twitter http://twitter.com/beneubanks

-LinkedIn http://linkedin.com/in/beneubanks

-Others YouTube http://youtube.com/upstarthr

March 26, 2015
7 Steps to Implement a Realistic Job Preview
Last week we discussed why it’s important to do a realistic job preview. So how exactly do you do it? Internships and co-op programs are long-term realistic job previews. This set up can provide a company with an opportunity to screen candidates without a making a permanent hiring commitment, but it may take too long. For tips on starting a job shadowing program, click here.

In the absence of setting up an internship or co-op program, you can do a realistic job preview in a day or a week. The ultimate goal is to simulate the work and the work environment in a way that helps you assess their fit and ability to perform the work and allows them to decide if the opportunity is the right fit for them.

Steps to Implement Realistic Job Preview
1. Select a set of work that this person would be doing if hired. This should be real work, things the company needs to get done anyway. You are just assigning this work to this person for the time period you’ve selected.
2. To protect any proprietary information, since you are assigning them real work, get them to sign a confidentiality agreement.
3. Give them the basic information and knowledge to success, but don’t show them how to do everything. Provide them with any basic internal knowledge they need to get the work done and introduce them to people that they will need to work with or through to get the tasks done.
4. Bring them into the office (or if the work is virtual, let them work virtually) and give them the amount of time you think would be needed to complete the work to get it done.
5. Let them go and do the work.
6. Pay them the rate they would be getting paid for the amount of time they worked. This adds to the realistic nature of the exercise.
7. Assess how well they did the work, how needy they are in relying on others to get the work done and how well they interacted with others in getting the work done. Ask those they interacted with what they think. Creating a rubric of key criteria that corresponds with a scoring mechanism is a good idea. This helps to eliminate subjectivity and allows for better comparison across candidates.
Because a realistic job preview is somewhat involved, we suggest doing it towards the end of the process with your top 2-4 candidates.

Have you ever done a realistic job preview? How did it help you make a better hiring decision?
March 24, 2015